At Tuesday’s regular meeting, the Cheboygan County Board of Commissioners formally recognized the Cheboygan County Road Commission's hard work throughout the especially harsh winter.

County Chair Linda Socha said she wanted to officially recognize the road commission for the work it did over the winter, es­pecially realizing the com­mission was short-staffed.

“With everything going on, I know there are com­plaints about mailboxes getting thrown into the fields here,” said Socha, “overall I think with the winter and the short staff they had, they did a fan­tastic job. I am presenting this resolution to recognize them.”

The resolution states, “Whereas, the winter of 2013-14 has been one of extreme cold and near record setting snowfall throughout Cheboygan County; and whereas, the Cheboygan County Road Commission and staff are committed to maintaining quality and safe roads within Cheboygan County. Now, therefore, be it re­solved, that the Cheboygan County Board of Commis­sioners would like to rec­ognize the efforts of the Road Commission and its staff in maintaining the roads within Cheboygan County with limited staff and resources during this exceptionally difficult win­ter.”

Commissioner John Wallace said he had brought it up several meet­ings ago that the road com­mission should be recog­nized for its work through­out the winter.

“This is just building on that,” Socha said. “It puts it formally that we recog­nize them. And this will be sent to them.”

Commissioner Tony Ma­telski said the road com­mission has a policy about mailboxes damaged during winter by plows.

“The only time they pay for mailboxes is if they ac­tually hit it with the plow,” Matelski said. “There are a lot of mailboxes hit and knocked down this year. That's because the snow, when they plow, it's big chunks. You might be throwing a 500-to-1,000 pound chunk of snow against the mailbox.”

Matelski said the plow isn't actually hitting those mailboxes, but they are still coming down because of the weight of the snow being thrown at them.

“So, it's not their (plow drivers) fault,” he said.

“They have done an ex­cellent job this year,” Ma­telski said.

Commissioner Bruce Gauthier said he would like to praise the road com­mission for the work it has been doing the last 25 years. He said he had worked as a rural mail car­rier for many years and the road commission helped him out of several situations.

Page 2 of 2 - “They got me out of a lot of scrapes,” Gauthier said. “They do a fine job.”

Socha said the road com­mission has been first on the scene in several dif­ferent situations through­out the winter, opening the road up for emergency personnel to be able to re­spond to calls.

“They went above and beyond to help Wolverine with the ice,” Socha said. “And they have been es­pecially short staffed. The least we can do is recognize them.”